There are special days in our life when we feel so happy and content that we can’t imagine life getting any better. Saint Symeon had such a day when he saw Jesus Christ. “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace.” The Church invites us to consider what it might take for our hearts to be filled with so much peace and joy at seeing Him that we are ‘ready’ to die.
My brothers and sisters, I want you to think for a moment in your hearts, a moment in time when you were so happy, when you had so much joy in your heart, when you were, as we would say, content. You had that peace in your life that, you know what, God? Today, I could die happy. Have you ever had a day like that? I haven’t. I’ve had amazing days in my life, when my son was born, when I was married. Maybe I should say that in the other direction, when I was married. I’m going to hear about that one later too. I’ve had days in my life when I was so filled with joy and contentment, but never once have I said the words of St. Simeon, who when he saw Christ with his own eyes, he said, “Lord, now, let your servant depart. Lord, now, I can die in peace.” I’ve never experienced that.
However, the church invites us today to think about that for our life. What would it take for us to be filled with so much peace and joy that we would tell God, “I’m ready to die”? The truth is we don’t know if we’re going to die today or tomorrow or next week or next year. We don’t know when that day is going to come, and the church is always talking about being ready, and we normally talk about going to confession. We normally talk about how we serve the poor, but do we talk about our hearts? Do we talk about how we have peace or whether we don’t have peace? Because that’s what Simeon felt when he saw God. We have an opportunity, my brothers and sisters, to see God every day. Every time we walk in the church, God is on the altar table. 24 hours a day, God is inside this church in a physical real way.
When we receive Holy Communion, the chalice, the actual body and blood of Christ, we not only do we see him, we’re going to taste him. We’re going to receive him into our hearts, into our bodies. And yet will we say the prayer of Saint Simeon today, “Lord, now, I can die.” That’s the kind of joy and peace God wants for us in his relationship with us. He wants us to be able to look on him and to be with him and to talk to him and to commune with him and have such peace in our hearts that everything else goes away. And yet even in our greatest joy, we still want to live longer. Even though we know this life is filled with pain and suffering and illnesses and what have you, for some reason, we prefer it here on Earth instead of being with God. I don’t understand it. To be honest, I don’t.
I search for the day that I could say the prayer of St. Simeon, “Lord, now, I could die in peace,” because that would mean I finally found God in my heart. Not what I think God is, not what someone tells me God is, but when I actually feel him in my heart, when I actually can look at the altar of God and not just intellectually think I’m looking at God, but in my heart feel that I’m looking into the eyes of God. This is the invitation of Christ to look on him and to feel his presence and to feel the peace that only he can bring. You’ve heard me say before, not peace like the world gives. The world gives peace because we’re afraid of getting something worse. Countries are at peace because they’re afraid of being destroyed. Not that kind of peace, that sense of joy and contentment and stillness in our heart that only God can give.
So my invitation for you, my brothers and sisters, take it from your mind and ask God to settle it in your hearts and when you come as Orthodox Christians do, when we come for Holy Communion, today, I want you to remember you are blessed to be seeing and tasting God. No other place in the world can we do that, but right here in the divine liturgy. Sure, we celebrate Ipapanti, the blessing when Christ was 40 days old, and we do it to all of our children. All of us were brought into the church when we were 40 days old, but the church always uses these historic things to remind us of the true things in our heart. And that is God has promised each and every one of us, not just St. Simeon, that we would see God. My brothers and sisters, if you open your hearts, today is the day you will see God. Invite him in and experience the peace and joy that only comes from him. Glory to God.
